Half-Term Report

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On taking office in 1997 Tony Blair promised to issue an annual report to Parliament on the progress made by his Government. The initiative did not last long. Publication became an annual ritual of ridicule. In 2000 the Prime Minister suffered a particularly bruising encounter in the Commons when the report acclaimed the creation of a sport academy that hadn’t, in fact, been built. There was no report in 2001. Or thereafter.

Yesterday the coalition partners revived this unlamented idea with a halfway report on their term in office. It did not, or at least did not immediately, humiliate those